Showing posts with label My Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label My Life. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Travelling in Japan - Day 2 (part 2)

For much of the afternoon and early evening, our group was on foot, exploring temples in Kyoto. We walked to Ryosen, Kiyomizu, and Yasaka temples.










 Tokyo and Kyoto are very humid right now, with varying clouds and clear sky as the days progressed.  Portions were also very crowded.  It's very easy to unintentionally bump into people.


I don't know if this is a daily thing, or we visited Kyoto at the right time, but there were a lot of Japanese dressed in traditional attire, both men and women.  It kinda reminded me of Renfair in the US.


Monday, July 20, 2015

Travelling in Japan - Day 2 (part 1)

After a somewhat restful/restless night, I woke up on my day 2 in Japan with a mild recovery from the previous day's 13hr flight (to a location 12 time zones out of sync with my own).  Our party all had to get up and get out early, since our JR bullet train ride from Tokyo to Kyoto was early morning.

The ride is about two hours on the bullet train.  Our JR train commonly maintained speeds between 150 to 160 mph.  We watched the city, suburbs, countryside, suburbs and city wiz by.  Of note, there were an unusual number of Ferris Wheels visible from the train, along with a rather high number of netted driving ranges.

Once in Kyoto, we dropped our bags off at our hotel, then went exploring on foot.  We found a good place along the river for lunch.




I had the Chicken Salad.  This dish was a 'salad' in name only.  The chicken was great, and the lettuce was really unnecessary.  The noodles where good too.  I was suprized that I liked the tofu skins that came with the appetizer.

The view we had while dining was of the river, but the river isn't much of a view.


There were several types of birds that were up to their bird-antics nearby the river, which did serve as mild entertainment while we enjoyed our lunch.  Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel to properly check-in and prepare for the afternoon exploration around town.

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Travelling to Japan - first day

Well, here I am in Japan, on a business trip.  There are some expected things, and some not so expected things.  As expected, the bathrooms in the hotels are small.  The hotel rooms themselves are small, often with the bed butt up against one of the walls.  

Things not expected are many.  The main airport into Tokyo is actually quite a distance from Tokyo.  I took the JR (bullet train) from the Narita International Airport to Tokyo.  The trip took just under an hour, and included only a couple of stops.  

Have cash (yen)!  You may be unpleasantly surprized by the number of places that don't take credit card!

There is English all over the place.  Pretty much any business you might find yourself will have some ability to communicate with you, some better than others.  There are a lot of English translations for things like street signs, company names, restaurant menus, etc.

The mass transit makes getting around fairly easy.  Not everything in translated into English at every point, but enough of it is translated when and where you'll need it in order for you to get to the right location.

The first night I was the Tokyo, in the area of Shinagawa.  I met my co-workers at a quaint sushi restaurant.

 





Since I arrived late in the day and zonked out from a 13 hour flight, I turned in early with the hopes of waking up the next day gleefully well adjusted to the local time zone.  That plan kinda worked.  Kinda.


Sunday, June 14, 2015

Faeryland Coitus


via Instagram http://ift.tt/1QYzaQC

To carry one from my previous discussion, I had one other surviving shoe polish on card stock paper painting from my time spent bored working in a mall shoe store when I was a kid. This one can have a multitude of meanings. The title Faeryland Coitus only reflects one interpretation. I believe I did this one as contrast to my shear #boredom. I created excitement from nothingness. There are many objects in the painting. In some views, it could be seen as a lot of different fairies doing naughty things. From another perspective, it could be a hands smashing something between them as they clap together. It could also be two figures engaged in acts of carnal lust with tornado like movement. It ultimately represents my desire to be freed from my imprisonment at the shoe store during long and empty hours.

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Jury Duty in the Bay State (They finally caught me)

I've managed to avoid serving on a Jury for over twenty years.  I did have to go in for Jury Duty one time for a case in California, but didn't get picked.  Massachusetts works a bit differently. They don't call juries for individual cases, but rather call in a pool of people who are made available to any cases that happen to be in the process of jury selection for that day.  You have to make yourself available for the day for any cases that might call for a jury.  If you get dismissed from one jury, you have to go back to the pool.  There is still a high chance that you'll be called in for another case later that day.  The advantage of this is that you serve for one day in the pool, or if you get picked, you serve for one case.  Once complete, you are off the hook from having to serve for three years.

I was dismissed from the first case of the day.  That case was predicted to have a 4 to 5 day length.  After returning to the jury pool, several of us were called into another case.  That case was for a DUI, and the judge predicted the trial would be complete before the end of the day.

The case was simple enough.  A man was pulled over in the middle of the night for suspicion of driving a vehicle while being impaired by alcohol.  It wasn't a straightforward DUI case.  There was no alcohol blood level evidence presented.  The officer, who was forthrightly doing his duty, did a fine job in identifying a driver who was possibly impaired.  His testimony was based solely on observations of the car for a very brief period of time, a smell of alcohol within the vehicle once he approached, a smell of alcohol on the driver's breath, and somewhat convoluted description of field sobriety tests and results.  The driver passed one test, and technically failed another, though not in a manner that one would expect to rise to the level of being impaired while driving.

There was a lot of repetition of statements and evidence while the trial went on for a few hours. There was evidence that had nothing to do with the case.  There was contradictory evidence presented by the prosecutor.  There was flaws in the evidence that the defense attorney pointed out very well.

In the end, the jury of six people, including myself, came to the conclusion that the evidence did not prove the individual was impaired.  I'm sure the District Attorney's office was a little disappointed by our jury's ruling, but they really didn't make their case.

The big surprize for me was the frankness and approachability of the judge.  He walked his jury through the process from beginning to end, with the full understanding that most of us had no idea how anything worked.  He explained the law well, as well.  After the trial was over, he visited with us one last time to see if there was anything in the process that we felt needed improvement.  None of us could think of anything.  I think we were just grateful to be on a quick in-and-out case that didn't have a lot of evidence to review.  As suggested by the Judge, we were done before the end of the day.

Did I come out of the process with a new found respect for it?  Not really.  I wouldn't mind serving on smaller, one-day cases at some future point. I am just thankful I didn't get tied up with a case that lasts a week.


Saturday, January 17, 2015

Accosted

My wife and I are at the grocery store. She just walked up to the ginger inbetween two older gentlemen looking for various other vegetables and things.  One gentlemen almost immediately asks here for advice on how to pick good ginger.  I can only presume he felt comfortable/secure in asking her because she is Chinese American.  He thanked her and moved on with his fine pick of ginger.

Then immediately, the other gentlemen engaged her in a conversation about her heritage,  Chinese language, etc.  I didn't interfere because it was more adorable than anything.

We finally broke away with our fine pick of ginger.